Heathcote fuming after Doomben race dumped

Wednesday 5 November 2014, 3:46pm

Trainer Robert Heathcote was furious after Queensland racing officials scrapped an open company race in Brisbane for the second week in a row.

Racing Queensland deleted a 1050m event from Saturday's Doomben card when only four horses accepted on Wednesday.

It follows a similar decision to scrap an open staying race at Doomben a week earlier.

Heathcote had planned to use the sprint as a campaign starting point for Excellantes en route to the Keith Noud Quality in two weeks and George Moore Quality in a month.

Desleigh Forster was also hoping to run the smart Adebisi.

"Last week it was my horse Volkhere who was disadvantaged when the open staying race was scrapped. This week it is Excellantes," Heathcote said.

"He has never won first-up and this race was going to be a vital lead-in to two black type races for him."

Heathcote said he could have entered lesser performed horses to bulk up the field but opted to do the right thing.

"I played by the rules and look where it got me. They should be running open company races no matter what," he said.

"This is a decision which makes no common sense. Surely a race between Adebisi and Excellantes would have attracted more attention than the rest of the card."

Racing Queensland CEO Darren Condon said the race was deleted due to insufficient starters in accordance with local policy.

"But we have spoken with the Brisbane Race Club and they are willing to put on a special barrier trial for those horses who missed out on Saturday morning," Condon said.

– AAP

Latest News

Prime Thoroughbreds - We have a Host of Leaders in our Team

Tuesday, 29 June 2021

Prime Thor­ough­bred’s cur­rent rac­ing team is putt­ing to­gether quite a re­cord. We have 22 hors­es that have raced in our team at pre­sent. Six­teen of th­ese are win­n­ers in­clud­ing the Stakes win­n­ing trio Ru­bisa­ki, Fituese and Xtreme­time with Miss Di­vine Em and Miss In Charge run­n­ing 4th in Stakes races. This sees a stakes win­n­er to win­n­er ra­tio of 18.75% with a stake’s per­formed to win­n­er ra­tio of 31.25%. Th­ese are ex­cep­tio­n­al fig­ures.   More »

Freedmans land maiden Group One win

Saturday, 27 February 2021

Un­der-rat­ed fil­ly For­bid­den Love has emerged as an au­tumn car­ni­val smokey with a bril­liant per­for­mance to win the Sur­round Stakes at Rand­wick.  More »

Capriccio completes Damian Lane treble

Saturday, 27 February 2021

In a big day for coun­try-trained hors­es, War­r­nam­bool fil­ly Capric­cio has tak­en out the In­glis Dash for Daniel Bow­man.  More »

More news headlines »